, 5 min read
Most people like to learn, some like it more than others… and they decide to focus their life on learning. They become scholars. I think it is a mistake to pursue a Ph.D. for its own sake but it is not a mistake to pursue scholarship. In the good old days, people received a Ph.D. as a recognition…
, 3 min read
As a young student, I was undisciplined. Though I did well in mathematics, I often couldn’t be bothered to write down clean computations. I would do the work mostly in my head, and I would quickly jot down the answer. Such a strategy serves you well early on during your education. However, later…
, 4 min read
I like to throw off my academic colleagues outside of computer science by pointing out that much of our software relies on probabilities… down to the ubiquitous hash table. They often expect software to be mostly designed around deterministic ideas. But probabilities are everywhere. One common…
, 3 min read
We like to have an idealized view of the scientist. He or she is someone who chose against a high-paying career to pursue the ideals of science and academia. Unlike the greedy engineer or entrepreneur, he works not for himself, but for the greater good. We often hold similar views of politicians,…
, 3 min read
Go is a new programming language invented by Google engineers. Apparently, it came about because they were tired to wait for their C++ code to compile. To run Go programs, you need to compile them. However, compilation is so amazingly fast that Go may as well be an interpreted language like Python…
, 1 min read
Want to become CEO of a major technology company? Consider the background of the hot CEOs of the hour: Amazon: Jeff Bezos has a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. Apple: Tim Cook got a degree in industrial engineering. Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg studied computer science. Google:…
, 1 min read
Should you ever compress your data to reduce memory usage? We are in 2050. Nobody uses tapes or disks anymore. The NSA has 1 billion servers. It needs so many to hold all of the data in memory. A contractor offers a marvellous algorithm that can compress data by a factor of 1,000,000,000. The…
, 4 min read
Many of us want to be original in our work. For researchers, it is a job requirement. For software programmers, it makes little sense to redo what others did. Many of the people who did great things stood out by their originality. Great scientists like Nash are sometimes slightly or entirely mad.…
, 2 min read
In a recent Dr. Dobb’s article, Binstock announced the decline of Java and C++: By all measures, C++ use declined last year, demonstrating that C++11 was not enough to reanimate the language’s fortunes (…) Part of C++’s decline might be due to the emergence of competing native…
, 2 min read
Snowden revealed to the world that the NSA was systematically spying on all of us. Maybe more critically, we have learned that the NSA is spying on all American citizens. In fact, the NSA is even spying on its own congress. This spying violates the US constitution. We also know that such spying is…
, 2 min read
McArdle, an economist, recently wrote that a substantial fraction of PhD programs really shouldn’t exist. McGowan goes further by pointing out that there is little demand for science and technology PhDs. I can only agree. Meanwhile, the gap between tenure-track positions and the number of new…
, 2 min read
Jokingly, Rao pointed out that Americans are starting 2014 with an optimistic outlook: (…) it’s tough, but let’s just write off polar bears and groundwater pollution from fracking already and move on. But life is even sweeter than Rao thinks. Indeed, polar bears are not going extinct…
, 4 min read
John Cook provides some valuable advice today about when to delegate. An important point he raises is that doing a per-hour analysis makes little sense since human beings are not simple machines. For example, delegating low-pay work that you find enjoyable might not be financially wise despite…
, 2 min read
Given two positive integers x and y, the greatest common divisor (GCD) z is the largest number that divides both x and y. For example, given 64 and 32, the greatest common divisor is 32. There is a fast technique to compute the GCD called the binary GCD algorithm or Stein’s algorithm. According…
, 2 min read
Whenever I read social scientists, there is often, implicit in the background, the concept of “intelligence” as a well defined quantity. I have some amount of intelligence. Maybe you have a bit more. But what does computer science have to say about any of this? That is, what is this…
, 2 min read
Bitmaps are a simple data structure used to represent sets of integers. For example, you can represent all sets of integers in [0,64) using a single 64-bit integer. When they are applicable, bitmaps are very efficient compared to the alternatives (e.g., a hash set). Unfortunately, extracting the…
, 2 min read
This morning, I noticed some odd charges on my VISA card. They were attributed to sites such as videosupport1.com, bngvsupport.com, paysupport1.com, bdpayhelp.com. I called up my bank. They gave me the phone number of the company behind these pay sites and told me to ask what the charges were…
, 1 min read
Do we need academic copyright? Some historical perspective
, 3 min read
It is commonly believed that we introduced copyright to entice authors into producing lots of quality work by providing them with increased financial incentives. Despite the contrary evidence, many people still insist that without copyright law, we would not have Harry Potter or video games because…
, 2 min read
Some of the best job prospects are in the software industry. Programming as a career has several benefits worth considering: though not stellar, the pay can be quite good (e.g., 6 figure salaries are common), you do not need many years of study (e.g., some do not even have a degree), there aren’t…